REJECTED: That gradient is terrible.

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit that initial pitches are usually far from perfect. That’s why we do revisions.

But rarely are they absolutely, utterly, deeply.... disliked.

This brand needed to be a lot of things. Approachable. But also sleek, modern, forward-thinking, professional, clean, efficient, different, and more. Materials needed to be appealing to both large organizations and individuals: Organizations for the initial sell, then individuals for continued engagement.

The brand also needed to be able to integrate with those organizations’ existing brand; most of the identity needed to be able to ‘melt away’ when content was used on those organizations’ own websites and materials.

In other words, most branded materials needed to be targeting the organizations first and foremost. Partner with us. Partner with us! they needed to whisper. Clean, efficient, modern – those are what the organizations needed to get out of the brand at first glance.

Enter this beauty. I truly felt (and feel) it embodied the complicated need to be efficient and friendly and modern and clean and different all at once. The rounded hero typeface, which I modified within the logotype to be more rounded, friendly, and sleek, was able to combine with an unexpected – though gentle! – gradient to create a strong initial pitch.

REJECTED: Big thumbs down on that gradient. Also, the font is too big and fat. No. We can’t have this.

“It is like reliving a website from twenty years ago.. No, I don’t like it.”

The verdict:

REJECTED!

Long story short, the client really really really really really disliked the gradient in this concept. And though they were initially feeling the rounded logotype, they ended up really disliking that too. Perhaps an overflow of all the deep-rooted dislike of the gradient. Ah, well.

The other concepts went over better. But this one (my favorite) was utterly REJECTED. 💔